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Published: Sat Oct 15 1983
Eva Lundsager, Were now like (detail), 2021, oil on canvas
At Martha’s Deli

So Will had finally broken off with Faith!
There she stood, gnawing a shish-kebab.
It seemed they no longer soaked in one bathtub
And made that kind of little wave.

Now she came over, wiping her hands in her dress
And asking if I might not be her friend.
I led her down through the bracken
And listened again to what the doctors told her

Of how she might live only a year,
To where earlier on I had come upon the vixen
That must have thought this her finest kill.

The taste of blood on a greased knife
Whereby she would happily drink herself to death.
She kissed me hard. I might have been her own Will.

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Paul Muldoon received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2003 for his collection Moy Sand and Gravel. He is currently president of the Poetry Society and the Poetry Editor for The New Yorker. (updated 6/2010)

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